A team of UQ researchers is well advanced on social, media and engineering planning for when NASA lands its announced human exploration missions on the Moon in 2020 and on Mars by 2037.
And right on cue, because NASA administrator Michael Griffin yesterday told the international aeronautics congress in India: "We are looking at the moon and Mars to build a civilisation for tomorrow and after that."
The UQ team — Dr John Cokley (Journalism), Dr Lydia Kavanagh, (Engineering), Dr Toni Johnson-Woods (Arts Ipswich) and Ms Rebecca Bloomer (Journalism) — presented innovative research to the 7th Australian Space Science Conference in Sydney last week, alongside theoretical physicists, planetary geologists and space exploration experts from France, Italy, the US and England as well as around Australia.
The UQ team has shown how important community consultation is to the space race, and how to achieve the kind of consultation needed to plan sustainable, liveable communities, either in orbit or on the Moon or Mars.
And this team brings with it some significant research clout: Dr Johnson-Woods was named last week as the winner of a $200,000 Australian Research Council grant; and Dr Kavanagh was earlier named as the leader of a $180,000 Carrick Institute for Learning and Teaching award project.
Spokesman: Dr John Cokley, 0413 004 138, 3365 3381, j.cokley@uq.edu.au
Dr Lydia Kavanagh, l.kavanagh@uq.edu.au
Dr Johnson-Woods, t.johnsonwoods@uq.edu.au
Ms Bloomer, r.bloomer@uq.edu.au
